[Bf-funboard] Physical Memory and Cycles

Fri May 10 06:39:18 CEST 2013

On Fri, May 10, 2013 6:33 am, L. S. wrote:
> Hi, I think there are a few things that you aren't quite understanding. A
> lot of high
> ratings on Microsoft's index won't guarantee that everything works super
> fast in
> Blender. One bottleneck can bring everything down to a crawl. I think that
> in most
> cases the RAM on your computer will not be the bottleneck.
> Having a lot of RAM can be helpful, but suppose you have 4GB of RAM on
> your
> computer, and your .blend only uses up 1GB of space. More RAM will not
> help or
> "mean more processes," because there is nothing else to be stored. So far
> as I know,
> there is no way that you "incorporate" system RAM with a graphics card, so
> more
> RAM will not help that either.
> I don't know enough about programming to say what makes it difficult to
> support
> other cards (like AMD), only that there is a bug in the AMD driver which
> prevents
> Cycles from using AMD cards correctly.

The issue is that AMD have purposefully crippled the OpenCL drivers by
inlining all the compiled kernel code which requires excessive amounts of
physical memory and takes a very long time to compile.

They say they are working on a fix but they truth is they have known
exactly what they were doing from the start. They simply don't want openCL
to be complete as it would make a big impact for other open source
projects which do not pay them kickbacks (M$) and compete with the
proprietary projects their mates are being sponsored to build with AMD's
ever dwindling cash supply.

It's a game that has been played for a while. In this case the Blender
devs have caught them with their hand in the coookie jar so now they have
egg on their face and might be forced to do something about it.

Don't expect it to happen quickly though as AMD are completely beholden to
M$, APPLE, and the US Military (via the Carlyle Group who are major
shareholders in Mubadala which is the parent company of AMD).

> I suppose most gaming companies have supported both AMD and Nvidia cards
> for
> years, but most gaming companies do not use Cycles. Most do not need the
> same
> feature set that Cycles does, because they are creating graphics for games
> which
> will not use, say, physically accurate ray-traced glass.
> I would suggest doing what Mr. Knapp suggested, and use the features
> Cycles
> has to improve render times. For example, use tiles, strategic sampling
> (including
> the non-progressive mode features) to avoid unnecessary samples, and lower
> the
> numbers of bounces.
>
> I hope this helps!
> -LswaN
>
>> Date: Fri, 10 May 2013 02:03:10 +0800
>> From: lun3rcry at gmail.com
>> To: bf-funboard at blender.org
>> Subject: Re: [Bf-funboard] Physical Memory and Cycles
>>
>> Thing is, according the windows experience index for my computer
>> graphics,
>> cpu, ram and graphics/corporate/gaming rendering my system scores 7's
>> and
>> up for all of these, which means cycles should not render nearly as
>> slowly
>> as it does for me.  But surely incorporating the ram means more
>> processes
>> are possible due to more being stored in memory while rendering?  I know
>> it
>> seems intel and AMD don't seem to support Blender, but what is difficult
>> about making Blender use the GPU of different cards?  Haven't most
>> gaming
>> companies being doing this for years?
>>
>> Ryan
>>
>>
>> On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 12:05 AM, Knapp <magick.crow at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > On Thu, May 9, 2013 at 5:12 PM, Nkansah Rexford
>> > <nkansahrexford at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > > @Knapp. For me, yes, have researched everywhere for speeding cycles.
>> But
>> > > the issue from Ryan has to do with, Can RAM supplement GPU for
>> rendering
>> > if
>> > > one doesn't have nvidia for cycles?
>> > >
>> > > It isn't possible now, but can it be done?
>> > >
>> > > I believe if its possible and done, it can go a long way to close
>> the gab
>> > > between cycles and people like myself.
>> > >
>> > > AMD and Intel i guess aren't making any plans of supporting Blender
>> soon
>> > (I
>> > > stand to be corrected though)
>> > >
>> > > rex
>> >
>> > You have to understand programming. Memory only helps if it can be
>> > used for something that speeds up the calculations. For example if you
>> > are working a big database and you want to sort it, then you can load
>> > it all into memory and sort it, if you have enough ram to hold all the
>> > date or a way to sort big chunks in memory. This is way faster than
>> > moving records around on the hard drive one by one.
>> >
>> > I don't know how cycles really works but it is ray traced, I think.
>> > This means that you have a vector or ray that bounces around from
>> > camera surface to the light and you calculate the color based on this
>> > ray. Problem is that you have to do this for every ray and that means
>> > a LOT of them. Ram does not help this. Having a cpu for each ray does.
>> > Thus a CPU with 12 cores is good but a GPU with 1000 is WAY better and
>> > you see this in the test results.
>> >
>> > Other factors are how much ram you system has for holding the .blend
>> > and also how much the GPU has for hold the model.  Also the pipe size
>> > between the ram and the GPU or CPU and the speed of the CPU/GPU.
>> >
>> > Devs please correct me, if I am wrong or point out things I missed.
>> >
>> > --
>> > Douglas E Knapp
>> >
>> > Creative Commons Film Group, Helping people make open source movies
>> > with open source software!
>> > http://douglas.bespin.org/CommonsFilmGroup/phpBB3/index.php
>> >
>> > Massage in Gelsenkirchen-Buer:
>> > http://douglas.bespin.org/tcm/ztab1.htm
>> > Please link to me and trade links with me!
>> >
>> > Open Source Sci-Fi mmoRPG Game project.
>> > http://sf-journey-creations.wikispot.org/Front_Page
>> > http://code.google.com/p/perspectiveproject/
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>>
>>
>> --
>> They say the extractor can be.. a little disconcerting to the thought
>> process..I'd uh.. offer you a couple of Aspirin but snigger, I'm not
>> authorised to prescribe medication hah hah hah! Think good thoughts!
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